by Barbara Coeyman, Intern Minister

A sermon given April 21, 2002

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

History matters. History connects our past to our present and influences our future.

When I was in graduate school I had the good fortune to live in the Latin Quarter of Paris for a year. For the first few months, I was definitely a foreigner in a foreign land. Every time I fumbled with my francs and centimes to pay the local merchants, even without opening my mouth, it was clear to all of us that I was not a Frenchman. Luckily, I as learned more about the history of the French people, I began to feel more connected there. Now, I don’t know about you, but I feel connections through the ground I walk on with others who walked on that same ground. On cobblestones at the Versailles palace, I connected to those old court composers whom I had gone there to study. On the Latin

Quarter’s narrow, meandering streets laid out by Romans, I felt connections with people who have lived on the Left Bank for 2000 years. As I learned the history of Paris, I felt less like an outsider.

History matters. History is data about the past, and history is also interpreting the meaning of the past. One excellent way to learn the past and its meaning is through people. Knowing more about those who came before us connects us to them, and also tells us more about ourselves. Think about the popularity of the TV mini-series Roots.

Twenty-five years ago Roots raised American awareness of our African connections. Roots also stimulated more interest in history generally.

As participants in a faith community, each of us is connected to a religious history. Our religious history is in two liberal faith movements, Unitarianism and Universalism. These movements began centuries ago and merged in 1961. Our religious history is also in this congregation—First Unitarian Church of Portland—which goes back nearly 150 years.

Our religious history includes people with the same commitment, the same passion for liberal religion that we Unitarian Universalists stand for today. Who are some of these Unitarians and Universalists of the past? How can their stories inspire our own experiences? How will our experiences today influence the historical record of the future?

What I am most inspired by from people in our history—in this congregation and in Unitarian Universalism in general—is their courage to make radical choices: radical in the sense of going to the very foundation or root of their beliefs. These were choices that were risky; choices that bucked prevailing norms; choices that involved loneliness, isolation, and maybe even death. When we’re in the middle of making important choices, the outcome can often feel uncertain. Knowing about radical choices in our history which have lead to long-term gain can give us courage to press forward.

Let’s consider a few people in our history who made radical choices.

One of the best known figures in Unitarian history is 16th-century reformer Michael Servetus. His story illustrates just how far people will go for their religious beliefs. He was willing to die for his.

Servetus grew up in a family of Spanish Catholic nobles. Glorifying God well mattered to him, as did respecting the Bible. So he was disturbed that the concept of the

Trinity was not in the Bible. For Servetus, understanding Father, Son, and Holy Ghost as

three equal partners in divinity was not reasonable. At the tender and perhaps foolish age of 20, Servetus made his first radical decision, to publish a book called On The

Errors of the Trinity. Needless to say, Calvin, the Swiss Reformer, was not pleased with

Servetus.

To give you some sense of the inflammatory environment of that time and how far people would go to defend their convictions, Servetus went underground for 20 years to escape persecution. For reasons that are not totally clear to me, he then made a second radical choice. He resurfaced, in France. He was immediately captured, escaped, and was captured again in Geneva. Not long after, in 1553, with a crown of leaves on his head and his book strapped to his arm, Servetus was burned at the stake. As he died, he cried out, "O Jesus, Son of the Eternal God." The Calvinist henchman with him noted that if only Servetus had been willing to move his adjective, to name Jesus as the Eternal one, to say "Jesus the eternal Son of God," his life would have been saved.

The death of just one person, yes. However, Servetus inspired many other radical reformers. Buoyed by his courage, by the end of the 16th century, hundreds of Unitarian congregations existed in Europe. We owe our free faith today to radical reformers like Servetus.

The American Universalist Hosea Ballou didn’t die for his choices—he was actually honored—but Ballou also risked a lot to defend his beliefs.

Ballou grew up Baptist in late 18^th century New England. His father was also a preacher, but he preached God’s endless punishment. Hosea refuted such orthodoxy. He much preferred Universalism’s focus on God’s salvation and love, not for a select few, but for all believers. Hosea quickly gained fame for his homespun preaching style. He endured many challenges to his ministry, and although he often lived in poverty working in rural churches, he remained true to his calling. Luckily, his fortunes changed in 1818, when he was called to the First Universalist Church of Boston. In Boston, his outspokenness spearheaded the city’s religious liberals for many decades to come.

Ballou’s courage to stay with Universalism paid off. Largely through his influence, membership in Universalism grew quickly. By the mid-nineteenth century, Universalism was the fourth largest religious denomination in the United States. Clearly there were many Americans for whom eternal hellfire and damnation had no appeal!

The radical theologies of Unitarians and Universalists have often translated into radical commitments to social causes as well. Consider their work for racial justice.

For example, abolitionist minister Theodore Parker condemned many social evils.

However, he was most fervent in his stand against slavery, a stand that was radical even among Unitarians. Today it’s probably hard to believe that any Unitarian would not oppose slavery. However, many Unitarians, while not for slavery, did not take an active stand against it. Parker did in pre-Civil War New England. Parker believed slavery was not only a political issue, but also a religious issue. His grandfather had fought at the battle of Lexington, so the fighting spirit was in Parker’s blood. He kept his grandfather’s musket on the wall of his study where he wrote sermons, to protect himself and the slaves

whom he harbored from time to time.

Parker was equally radical in his preaching. He preached powerfully, often before crowds as large as 3,000. He was called the "most feared and best hated preacher in

America." His sermons often professed theology that was explosive. In 1841, he rocked the religious establishment with his most famous sermon, a sermon that discounted Christian miracles and revelations. Orthodox clergy actually asked God to punish Parker. One of them prayed, "We know that we cannot argue him down, but O Lord, put a hook in his Jaws so that he may not be able to speak." Luckily for us, their prayers weren’t answered.

Radical leaders appeared in many areas of our religious history. Sophia Lyons

Fahs is probably our most radical religious education proponent.

Fahs learned experimental education methods during graduate school in New

York City in the 1920s. She advocated a novel child-centered approach to religious education. For example, she believed that religious teaching should start from children’s experiences, not from Biblical texts, because their own stories first would later help children to sort out the factual from the mythical in the Bible.

The story of Fahs’ dismissal as principal of a school connected with Union Theological Seminary in New York illustrates her cautions over Bible stories. On Easter

Sunday in 1929, Union Seminary President Henry Sloane Coffin attended a children’s worship service that Fahs had organized. He was horrified to learn that Fahs’ students in that service had not been taught the story of Jesus’ resurrection. The administration of the school could not accept this heresy and they dismissed Fahs on the spot.

Undaunted, Fahs pressed forward in her work in religious education. Then, thirty years after that dismissal in New York, she was still going strong, and made another radical choice. At the age of 82, she was ordained into Unitarian ministry. She even dared to preach her own ordination sermon. Fahs lived to the age of 102 and has left a unique mark on liberal religious education, for children of all ages.

You might be thinking, what’s the big deal? Isn’t it only human interpretations anyway, this stuff called religious belief? However, beliefs influence actions, and what better place to find actions in the name of beliefs than right here in Portland.

In the 1850s there were a few pockets of liberal believers on the West Coast.

In Portland, a town of 2,000, a small group of Unitarians met privately for several years in the home of Thomas and Mary Ellen Frazar. However, in 1865 their privacy ended after an orthodox minister publicly criticized their unorthodox beliefs. These Unitarians moved quickly. For starters, seven women organized the Ladies Sewing Circle, which survives to this day as our Women’s Alliance. In two years the Sewing Circle helped raise enough money to buy a plot of land and support a minister’s salary. During this fundraising period, on July 9, 1866, 24 members signed the papers to incorporate the First Unitarian Society of Portland.

Then, on Christmas Eve, 1867, 26-year-old Thomas Lamb Eliot arrived as Portland’s first Unitarian minister. To speak out for Unitarian beliefs was personally not that radical for Eliot. He came from a venerable line of Unitarians in New England and St. Louis. However, Eliot’s move to the western frontier was radical. He had never been in good health, and he also brought a young family with him. Traveling to Oregon, via

Panama, was risky and the situation in Oregon unpredictable.

Even more radical, however, was Eliot’s daring to become the voice for a church whose mission was clearly distinct from that of the other churches in Portland. His sermons pushed boundaries. He even titled one sermon "The RADI CAL Difference between Liberal Christianity and Orthodoxy." In that sermon he discredited orthodox creeds that "arrest human thought, and shut out the ... progressive revelations of Truth." He preached important messages that people were eager to hear.

Eliot also carried his radical beliefs into the community. He ministered at the county jail, the poor farm, the insane asylum, and in towns outside Portland. He also worked for civic institutions like the Humane Society and the county school district, and he served as President of the Board of Trustees of Reed College. Thomas Lamb Eliot demonstrated vision and courage during his twenty-six-year ministry to this congregation.

On several occasions this congregation has also made radical decisions related to its location. In 1867, the new Unitarian Society erected a small chapel at Yamhill Street and Seventh Avenue. Some members worried that this location was "pretty far out."

(I don’t know, to me that seems just right for Unitarians.) Many members worried that it was too far from the city’s center on First Street. Even Eliot called the chapel’s location "a field of stumps, far out of town, with no street lamps, so that we could not hold evening services."

Therefore, in order to be closer to the city’s center, in 1868 the congregation held winter services in the Oro Fino Theater on First Street. The services were a great success, but other ministers in the city worried about the dangerous influence of the Unitarians. To preach such loose religious doctrine—in a theater—must certainly mean the breakdown of morals, they said. And even worse, it might make theater going reputable! Well, of course, this criticism only rallied the Unitarians all the more, and their membership grew.

So they returned to the theater the next winter for services.

In 1924 the congregation built a new sanctuary at 12th and Salmon Streets.

Many of us know this sanctuary today. In 1965 the congregation had to make an important decision about it. In that year, a fire ravaged the sanctuary. The congregation had to decide whether to stay in the inner city, and if they stayed, whether to build a new building, or to reconstruct the 1924 building. Perhaps it made more sense to move to the safer suburbs and a completely new building? The congregation chose the riskier path, to stay in the city, and to rebuild the sanctuary to its original look. This radical choice has meant the continuing presence of liberal religion in Portland’s downtown to this day and a sanctuary whose presence has many reminders of the congregation’s long history on this site.

Finally, jumping ahead over one hundred years to our modern history, in 1992 our presence in Portland’s downtown again attracted attention through our church building.

That year Oregon voters were challenged by ballot measure 9 against homosexuality. Our current senior minister, Rev. Marilyn Sewell, had just been called to the church. She and other church leaders agreed to declare this entire city-block a hate-free zone. To draw notice to that zone, they wrapped the entire block in red ribbon. They also called a press conference, a very important thing to do. Standing in solidarity against the ballot measure, this church’s prophetic voice for social justice in downtown Portland became even more widely recognized than it had been previously.

What radical choices are calling us now, ten years later, in this congregation, this district, and this world-wide liberal faith movement? Are we—like Servetus and Ballou—willing to hold fast to what we believe, even if others question our beliefs? Are we willing to take a stand for social issues like Parker and Eliot did: to work for the rights of the enslaved or the poor, to work at an abortion clinic or a homeless shelter, to work for economic justice? Are we, like Fahs, willing to commit our energy to our youth? Are we willing to make radical decisions about this building to insure adequate facilities for years to come?

Years from now, what will the history of our current choices look like? What will history say, about you, about me, about this church? I hope that history will say that we believed well, and lived well, and tried to do the right thing. I hope history will say that we acted—yes—from reason, freedom, and tolerance, but most of all, that we acted from love.

May we never loose our willingness to risk, and our drive to dare to make the radical choice.

So be it.

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Copyright 2002, Barbara Coeyman.  All rights reserved.